Mother describes her harrowing escape
‘I’m feeling very humble and gracious and guilty’ after two neighbours die
Sabrina Martino is haunted by what she saw and heard Tuesday morning when fire consumed her Barnstone Drive condo complex and claimed the lives of two of her upstairs neighbours.
But on Wednesday afternoon, the 45-year-old single mom said her “heart was singing.” She escaped the fire alive and on Wednesday her cat, Gizmo, was found hiding inside her waterlogged basement home.
“I lost everything, but I have more than the others,” Martino said in an emotional interview Wednesday afternoon. “The others were completely burnt out and not only that, two lives are gone. I’m feeling very humble and gracious and guilty. I feel guilty. I feel like I’m the lucky one.”
The fire early Tuesday gutted the four-storey complex, leaving eight families homeless. It killed an 81-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man. A woman in the unit managed to escape.
Martino was on the phone with her friend Lisa Cirone — unusual, given the hour — when she heard the fire alarm go off.
“I heard the alarms, but I wasn’t smelling smoke. I was on the phone a good five minutes and the whole time the fire was roaring but I didn’t know it. I said ‘Girl, why are they going off? It’s two in the morning. I doubt this is a test.’”
Then Martino heard crashing from the unit upstairs.
“I said ‘Lisa, something ’s wrong. I have to go check.’ So I opened up my patio door and at that point I didn’t see anything. I stepped onto my patio and I heard these crinkling noises. I said, ‘What the hell?’ And I peeked up and I was underneath the fire. I was looking up into the fire. I said, ‘Oh my God, Lisa, it’s on fire!’ and she said, ‘Sabrina get the f--- out!’”
Martino thought about going inside to look for Gizmo, but it was too late. She left the patio door open and ran.
Cirone, who lives just around the block, was there in a flash, and wanted to try a rescue herself.
“Lisa was going to be a hero. She was going to go up to the second floor and get them out. I said, ‘Lisa you can’t. It’s too vicious.’ I had to fight her off and when the cops arrived I said, ‘You’ve got to help me (stop her).’
“She’s dealing with a lot of guilt too,” Martino said. “She says, ‘I could have kicked those doors down,’ and I said, ‘Lisa, you don’t know how heavy these doors are. You couldn’t do it.’”
Martino was stunned by how fast the fire spread. “It was the most devastating thing I’ve ever witnessed. It just went up like paper. By the time firefighters got there it was all the way up the roof.”
An elderly woman in the top unit usually lives alone, but on Monday night her son was staying with her. The woman was ignoring the fire alarms, but was made to leave by her son.
“It was like she had a guardian angel with her. If he hadn’t been there, I’m sure she would have perished too.”
Martino doesn’t have insurance to cover her property. By cruel fate, she cancelled her insurance on Friday because she was switching companies.
“Did I know this was going to happen three days later? No. But I’m lucky. It’s just stuff,” she said.
Martino’s son, Preston, was staying with his father the night of the fire, but visited the fire scene on Wednesday.
“My son went in there and said, ‘What a s--t show this is.’ He even made the firefighter laugh,” she said.
“My boy is such a strong boy, and I’m so proud of him.”
Chris Murphy, 24, lives across the street from the complex. He said he slept through it all, but was devastated to see the destruction Tuesday morning. He’s set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the families affected.
“I’m just trying to help out anyway I can. Times are hard, with the virus, but things can always be worse,” said Murphy, who is currently laid off from his job as a cook because the Kanata restaurant where he worked closed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. He is still collecting names and figuring out a way to distribute the money, which as of Wednesday afternoon had topped $3,500.
“I’ve been reaching out to as many members of the community as I can, trying to spread the word,” he said.
It was Murphy who found Gizmo and connected Martino with her cat.
“This young man is every mother’s dream come true,” Martino said. “It’s just so nice to see so much good in this world.”
Murphy made soup and pasta salad and was distributing it to people who needed it at lunchtime on Wednesday, she said.
“My Barrhaven community has been amazing. My neighbours around me have been so amazing. What a true community of hearts.”
And despite the COVID -19 pandemic, she said, “There’s been a lot of embracing.”
The Ottawa police arson squad is investigating the fire, as is standard practice whenever there is loss of life. No cause has been determined. bcrawford@postmedia.com Twitter.com/getBAC